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buswolley writes:

Apparently, as we age, we accumulate old cells that have stopped dividing. These old (senescent) cells appear to be associated with age-related disease, not just as a symptom but as a cause.

Using methods that target and kill senescent cells in aged mice improved mice's health substantially and a single dose led to improved exercise capacity for at least 7 months following drug treatment.

I'm reminded of the anti-aging treatments depicted in Kim Stanley Robinson's (excellent; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy) Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars Sci-Fi Trilogy in which some anti-aging treatments included synaptic stimulus and brain plasticity treatments that altered character's personalities and neural pathways. Could killing of senescent cells also kill neurons which act as critical nodes in the brain's network, perhaps leading to an altered sense of self? To what extent would we be willing to lose ourself to live (a lot) longer and healthier?

Press: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150309144823.htm
Articile: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.12344/abstract

AnonTechie writes:

Unlike electromagnetic radiation, which consists of massless and accelerated charged particles, galactic cosmic rays (CR) are composed mostly of atomic nuclei and solitary electrons, objects that have mass. Cosmic rays originate via a wide range of processes and sources including supernovae, galactic nuclei, and gamma ray bursts. Researchers have speculated for decades on the possible effects of galactic cosmic rays on the immediate environs of Earth's atmosphere, but until recently, a causal relationship between climate and cosmic rays has been difficult to establish.

A research collaborative has published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that mathematically establishes such a causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global temperature, but has found no causal relationship between the CR and the warming trend of the 20th century.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/23/1420291112

AnonTechie writes:

Geneticists from the University of Leicester have discovered that millions of modern Asian men are descended from 11 powerful dynastic leaders who lived up to 4,000 years ago - including Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan.

The study, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust and published in the journal European Journal of Human Genetics, examined the male-specific Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son, in more than 5,000 Asian men belonging to 127 populations.
Most Y-chromosome types are very rare, but the team discovered 11 types that were relatively common across the sample and studied their distributions and histories.

Two common male lineages have been discovered before, and have been ascribed to one well-known historical figure, Genghis Khan, and another less-known one, Giocangga. The Leicester team found genetic links via a chain of male ancestors to both Genghis Khan and Giocangga, in addition to nine other dynastic leaders who originated from throughout Asia and date back to between 2100 BC and 700 AD.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-millions-modern-men-descendants-asian.html

[Abstract]: http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2014285a.html

fleg writes:

Looks like a slow news day so how about this one.

The Washington Post is reporting on a yougov poll that suggests...

"Republicans are far more confident than Democrats in their ability to survive the apocalypse. Forty-three percent of Republicans say that, if the apocalypse were to strike tomorrow, they would be sure to outlast most other people in their community. Only 22 percent of Democrats say the same."

Any solylentils care to comment on why this would be the case? Is it because Republicans have more guns? (Note: I'm not from the USA)

Hugh Pickens writes:

The NYT reports that after a video was posted on YouTube that appeared to show members of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon at University of Oklahoma singing a racist chant, the organization’s board decided “with no mental reservation whatsoever that this chapter needed to be closed immediately.” The video shows a group of young white people in formal wear riding a bus and singing a chant laden with antiblack slurs and at least one reference to lynching. A grinning young man wearing a tuxedo and standing in the aisle of the bus pumps his fist in the air as he chants, while a young woman seated nearby claps. The chant vows that African-Americans will “never” be allowed to join the campus chapter.

The nine-second video was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday by a student group, the Unheard Movement, that first identified the people in it as members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, although the group did not indicate how it obtained the video or when it was filmed. University president, David Boren, said in an emailed statement that the administration was also investigating the video. “I have just been informed of the video, which purports to show students to show students engaging in a racist chant. We are investigating to determine if the video involved OU students. If O.U. students are involved, this behavior will not be tolerated and will be addressed very quickly,” said Boren. “This behavior is reprehensible and contrary to all of our values.” Students marched on the campus of the University of Oklahoma on Monday to protest the video.

tt0073454 writes:

On September 11th 2014, a fascinating media hack began surfacing online. A hack so intricately designed, it is clear that someone put a lot of effort into planning, seeding and trying to spread the rumor, using multiple services, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. We do know that many of the profiles involved, especially on Twitter, are of Russian origin. We still have no idea who specifically was behind the attempt.

The hoax claimed that a chemical factory in Centerville, Louisiana had exploded and was leaking hazardous chemicals everywhere. This began spreading, initially through text message alerts received by citizens of a neighboring town, and then around the web. The first Google search result, returned a fake wikipedia page (now deleted) tied to this supposed explosion. The page linked to a 30-second YouTube video where a camera was pointed towards a TV screen showing a fuming building along with ISIS fighters reading a message. Additionally, a Facebook page of a fake media outlet named ‘Louisiana News’ published a statement claiming that ISIS takes responsibility for the explosion in Centerville. And on Twitter, a full-blown tweet storm emerged, reaching peak velocity of one tweet per second.

"gewg_" writes:

The Toronto Star reports

We are announcing the cancellation of Digital Access, our paid digital subscription program for readers of our website, thestar.com, effective April 1, 2015.

[...]We are making this move after extensive input from our readers and our advertisers. Listening to our audiences is critical to the success of our daily newspaper and our digital offerings and we are committed to continually adjusting our digital strategies to provide them with what they want.

TechDirt notes

We've been saying it for years, but it needs to be said again: the news "business" has almost never (there are a very few exceptions) really been the "news" business. It has almost always been the community business. Build a community and then do something to monetize that community to continue serving that community.

[...]The Toronto Star's decision to kill off its paywall just reinforces the simple fact that a paywall is a stupid business model in an age of abundant information.

I note that The Star has no useful accessibility features in their page. Clearly, they don't get the online thing.

Geezer writes:

From Reuters http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKBN0M60YA20150310. The ACLU will be representing Wikimedia, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and some other unspecified groups in what looks to be, if successful, a watershed case of 1st and 4th Amendment rights versus the NSA surveillance machine. The government will probably move for dismissal on grounds of standing, as they have in the past. If the judge grants standing, the discovery process alone will be worth watching.

sigma writes:

Despite producing and exporting vast quantities of coal and gas, Australia has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. This is at least in part due to government and utilities spectacularly failing to predict the rapid uptake of renewable energy sources, and massively overbuilding conventional generators.

As renewable energy installers have commented, "A lot of people would be extremely happy if they could give the middle finger to the power companies." Customer anger with the utilities, combined with falling battery prices is causing increasing numbers of customers to abandon the system altogether, including some major commercial housing developments that may go ahead without a grid connection.

Solar power installers have long said the cost of batteries is the only thing holding back widespread residential consumer grid defection, but for new housing developments is even more compelling, given the huge costs of connecting them to the grid.

We recently had a related story: New Deployment Model for Solar Power.

AnonTechie writes:

Winfried Denk, Arthur Konnerth, Karel Svoboda and David Tank win The Brain Prize. ( http://www.thebrainprize.org/flx/prize_winners/ )

The scientists will share the 1 million Euro prize, to be presented on May 7 in Copenhagen by Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, for their invention and development of two-photon microscopy, a transformative tool in brain research.

Two-photon microscopy has dramatically changed the way we study the brain. It combines advanced techniques from physics and biology to allow scientists to examine the finest structures of the brain in real time. Using this revolutionary technology, researchers are now able to examine the function of individual nerve cells with high precision, especially how nerve cells communicate with each other in networks. This is a huge step forward in the understanding of the physical mechanisms of the human brain and how the brain's networks process information. In addition, researchers have been able to follow how connections between nerve cells are established in the developing brain. It has led to the identification of signaling pathways that control communication between nerve cells and provide the basis for memory, and it has enabled the study of nerve cell activity in the networks that control vision, hearing and movement.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/sf-wda030615.php

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at HackerNews is a link to the announcement of Starfighter, a CTF game publishing company, which plans to rework technical recruitment.

The company is planning to produce “Capture The Flag” (CTF) style games: players engage in a free to play games, with the objective of collecting flags. Each flag is obtained by solving some programming problem (such as hacking around a simulated security system). In the process of competing players have to learn the necessary skills and solve the problems to proceed.

A previous sample of this type of game from the founders of this company is microcorruption, which requires players to defeat a series of electronic locks.

The business model here appears to be to use the game mechanisms to track skills of the players, and to make money by matching talented performers with the correct profiles to hiring companies, using the in-game metrics as a filter. The company makes money from its role as a high quality recruitment agency service to the end companies, and as a result the game is entirely free to play for the gamers.

Original HackerNews discussion thread.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Joshua Rothman has a very interesting article in The New Yorker about Liu Cixin, China’s most popular science-fiction writer, author of thirteen books who until very recently had retained his day job as a computer engineer with a State-run power plant in a remote part of Shanxi province. It helped him to stay grounded and enabled him to "gaze at the unblemished sky" as many of his co-workers do.

In China, Cixin is about as famous as William Gibson in the United States and Cixin is often compared to Arthur C. Clarke, whom he cites as an influence. Rothman writes that American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity’s imagined future often looks a lot like America’s past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources.

For example, in “The Wages of Humanity,” visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth’s wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. In “Taking Care of Gods,” the hyper-advanced aliens who, billions of years ago, engineered life on Earth descend from their spaceships; they turn out to be little old men with canes and long, white beards. “We hope that you will feel a sense of filial duty towards your creators and take us in,” they say. "I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety," writes Rothman. In another story, “The Devourer,” a character asks, “What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding.” But you can’t expand forever; perhaps it would be better, another character suggests, to establish a “self-sufficient, introspective civilization.” "At the core of Liu’s sensibility," concludes Rothamn, "is a philosophical interest in the problem of limits. How should we react to the inherent limitations of life? Should we push against them or acquiesce?"

EQ writes:

This looks like more patent warfare between big companies—Microsoft is suing Kyocera in Washington District court for patent infringement. Why should we be concerned? Apparently it involves Android, and they are requesting an injunction against the sale and import of the phones.

From the article:

"We respect Kyocera but we believe they need to license the patented technology they are using. We're hopeful this case can be resolved amicably," said Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard in a statement. Kyocera's phones run on the Android operating system, developed by Google Inc. In its lawsuit, Microsoft accuses Kyocera of using patented technology including location services and text messaging. The case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC vs. Kyocera and Kyocera Communications Inc., 15-346.

Reuters has a brief summary posted.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Jonathon Mahler writes in the NYT that in much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America’s college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. "Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union," writes Mahler. "It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school." And while much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. “Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps,” says Danielle Keats Citron. “It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way.” Since the app’s introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist “yaks” have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a “yakker” proposed a gang rape at the school’s women’s center.

Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app’s privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak’s particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. “It’s a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension,” says Elias Aboujaoude.” “You don’t know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it’s very close to you.”

fliptop writes:

Gigaom, the influential technology website founded by Om Malik nearly a decade ago, is no more. Although Monday saw a lot of new content on the site, including a flood of news and analysis from Apple's event, the site's management ended the day at 5.57PM PT by posting a message notifying readers that "all operations have ceased" as a result of the company becoming unable to pay its creditors.

Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.

Original story spotted on TheVerge.